A campaign which led ferry companies to stop importing animals for medical
research was masterminded by a single animal rights militant backed by just
a handful of supporters.

Luke Steele managed to force ferry companies to stop carrying live animals destined for science laboratories simply by encouraging a small number of fellow activists to inundate the firms’ directors with emails and letters.

The firms were so nervous that 22-year-old Steele and his acolytes would unleash more extreme tactics against them, they gave in to the demands — partly because of his past involvement in a string of militant protests.

Just two companies now transport research animals into Britain after Stena Line joined P&O Ferries and DFDS Seaways in halting the importation of cats, mice, monkeys and other animals for laboratories.

Several eminent scientists have described the campaign as a major blow to research into conditions such as muscular dystrophy and motor neurone disease.

Mr Steele and his comrades at the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance (NAVA), which he launched in May 2010, now plan to intensify their campaign against airlines still willing to transport animals for medical research — chief among them Air France.

At a rally in Cambridgeshire yesterday, NAVA supporters were urged to turn their fire on the airline and other carriers holding out. The group’s website carries a guide on how to “smash Air France”, including tips on demonstrations, picketing travel agents and emailing the airline’s directors.

Air France has been targeted by activists on the continent, with protests outside its Paris headquarters and the offices of its sister firm KLM, in Amsterdam. The French airline says it has no intention of withdrawing from the trade.

Steele was absent from yesterday’s rally as he is in Leicester prison. He was remanded in custody on February 17, accused of breaching bail conditions imposed following his arrest at a protest camp outside Harlan Laboratories in Leicestershire. The conditions included a ban on attending animal rights events, such as meetings or protests.

He is now seen as a key militant who has turned the internet into a weapon for activists.

Mr Steele’s campaign against the ferry companies began on May 18 last year, when P&O received an apparently innocuous email from NAVA, addressed to several of its senior executives, calling on it to stop carrying laboratory animals into the country.

Over the following days more emails began to land in the in-boxes of P&O directors. Letters were sent to their home addresses.

It was noted that the tone was more strident. All similarly worded, they stated: “I was disgusted to hear that P&O Ferries have refused to place a ban on laboratory animals being transported on board your vessels at the Port of Dover,” and went on to claim that primates and beagles shipped to labs in this way “will be burned, poisoned, gassed and electrocuted as part of horrific experiments inside vivisection centres”.

A separate email, understood to have been sent by NAVA, instructed supporters to turn their fire on P&O. The instructions included suggested wording for letters of protest and the email addresses of executives, including its fleet director, ports director and human resources director.

The campaign extended to social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Although the number of emails received by P&O, DFDS Seaways, and more recently Stena Line is understood to have been no more than “several dozen” in each case — including some sent from as far afield as Brazil — the ferry companies feared they might soon find themselves at the receiving end of direct action by NAVA.

P&O passed examples of the emails to Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command. There were fears that staff and their families could find themselves subjected to the kind of intimidatory tactics suffered by individuals at other companies targeted by the animal rights movement.

The ferry industry also has memories of bitter protests against the export of live animals in Brightlingsea in 1995, when for 10 months the small Essex port was besieged by activists, eventually forcing the exporters to abandon the route.

A senior P&O source said: “We have come under strong pressure from the anti-vivisection brigade over the last year and we came to the decision that we will no longer carry animals for research purposes.

“We knew from our experience of extremism in the Nineties, when the anti-transportation of livestock campaign got into full swing, that we did not want to subject our staff to that kind of thing, in case it turned nasty.”

Mr Steele’s record of activism would have fuelled those fears. His career as an animal rights protester began when he was just a teenager.

In August 2006, aged 17, he helped organise a march in Hull against a firm of beagle breeders. The same month he claimed anglers were a legitimate target for protests, after a 36-year-old woman fishing on a Cumbrian lake was attacked by hunt saboteurs.

In October 2008, Mr Steele, a former grammar school boy from Leeds, was involved in a raid on a farm in Lincolnshire.

Activists had discovered it was supplying rabbits to laboratories. Paint stripper was thrown on the farmer’s car and 129 rabbits were freed, forcing contracts to be cancelled.

In the next step in his campaign he began using Freedom of Information laws to force universities to reveal details of animal experiments, with the intention of using the material to mount demonstrations, including one held in Bradford. Scientists feared the information would be used for intimidation.

Mr Steele has said he does not want people to break the law, but added: “Obviously we can’t control what everybody does.”

When five activists from Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty were jailed in 2010, following a campaign against a number of firms supplying Huntingdon Life Sciences, Mr Steele appeared to defend their actions.

Outside Winchester Crown Court, which heard of tactics including false allegations of paedophilia and the daubing of “puppy killer” on cars, he told television broadcasters: “As has been seen in the past with the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid movement, people are bound to take the law into their own hands.”

Mr Steele was arrested in April last year, along with fellow activist Jonathan White, and charged with interfering with the work of Harlan Laboratories and three other firms.

The tough bail restrictions were imposed after prosecutors said his activities cost Harlan Laboratories £70,000 over a number of weeks.

Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University, said the latest campaign represents a disturbing development.

“Vital research on brain disease, cancer and heart disease is already being impeded because of the targeting of airlines and ferry companies by tiny, unrepresentative groups,” he warned.

“It’s important not to give in to intimidation. The Government and the medical research community must support the transport companies and explain to the public why the importation of a small number of animals, mainly mice, under the strictest regulations, is crucial for medical progress.”

UPDATE: On 27 July 2012 Luke Steele was sentenced to 18 months in prison for harassing staff at Harlan Laboratories. A second activist, Jonathan White, 22, was given a seven-month sentence, suspended for 18 months. Steele also received a criminal ASBO barring him from taking part in animal-rights protests.

The pair were members of a small group who terrorised staff at Harlan's three UK sites last year, using loudhailers to chant "shame on you", "blood on your hands" and "puppy killers" at employees queuing up in their cars to enter or leave the laboratories.